1. Technical Field
The present invention—involving bookbinding methods and image-forming systems for binding the spine endface of sheet blocks having been collated into bundles to finish the bundles into booklets—relates to a method and device for inserting foldout printing leaves into a bookbinding-processed sheet bundle.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, this kind of image-forming system is known in the art to have a bookbinding unit connected to an image-forming unit such as a printer and the like to collate printed sheets into a sheet bundle and bind a spine edge of the sheet bundle using adhesive or the like. A system configuration that folds sheets conveyed from an image-forming apparatus using predetermined specifications such as a single fold or a gate fold and the like and collates the sheets is known.
For example, Japanese Unexamined Pat. App. Pub. No. 2005-335262 discloses an image-forming system in which sheets on which images have been formed in an image-forming apparatus (printed sheets) are conveyed to a bookbinding unit and are collated and stacked into bundles in the bookbinding unit, and in which an adhesive paste is applied to the spine-portion endface of the sheet bundles and the sheet bundles are encasing-bound with cover sheets, and afterwards the sheet bundles in book-bound form are finished by trimming true the head, tail, and fore-edge portions.
Further, Japanese Unexamined Pat. App. Pub. No. 2006-076779 discloses a finisher that folds in half or thirds printed sheets produced in an image-forming unit, collates and stacks the sheets, and staple-binds them. Then with this sheet folding unit, both single-folding, whereby a sheet is folded over substantially in half, as well as Z-folding, whereby in divisions into thirds a sheet is folded inward and then is folded outward back onto itself, are proposed. It is to be noted that by the sheet folding unit in this document, a trim-cutting configuration for trimming true the periphery of staple-bound sheets is neither disclosed nor even suggested.
Meanwhile, in image-forming units or printing systems such as just described, foldout leaves are sometimes inserted into the sheets (bundles) bookbinding-processed into booklet form. When, for example, foldouts such as table-of-contents leaves, advertising leaflets, or errata leaves (correction leaves) are to be fit into booklets, the method adopted traditionally has been to interject-insert such leaves following the bookbinding process.
Thus, as just noted, in bookbinding and finishing systems that form predetermined images on sheets, and collate and stack the sheets and bind together their spine-portion edges, foldout leaves are sometimes inserted in post-bookbinding-process booklets. Conventionally, foldout leaves are printed separately from the book-forming sheets, and they are interject-inserted into the booklets. Consequently, a problem with inserting interjection leaves such as table-of-contents leaves, advertising leaflets, or errata/correction leaves is that it requires the considerable labor of producing images on the leaves, and of the interjection operation, etc., which therefore raises the job costs.
Particularly with conventional bookbinding methods that insert foldout leaves after the bookbinding process, because inserting a foldout leaf between specific pages with images demands an extremely complex operation, foldout leaves are inserted between arbitrary pages. Accordingly, inserting printed leaves corresponding to a specific image page, such as errata tables or supplementary explanations relating to the image page, has presented difficulties.